Hallowellowska antropologia kultury odżibuejskiej wobec kategorii żywotności w anishinaabemowin
Hallowellʼs Anthropology of Ojibwe Culture and the Category of Animacy in Anishinaabemowin

Summary/Abstract: Today, A. Irving Hallowell is known primarily as the forefather of the “new animism,” the author of the term “other-than-human persons,” and the scholar who introduced the concept of ontology into cultural anthropology. His field research among the Berens River Ojibwe had a significant psychological dimension, and the resulting work on indigenous taxonomy anticipated later developments in ethnoscience. By applying an early cognitive perspective in the study of the Ojibwe worldview, Hallowell formulated interpretations addressing both the ontological and linguistic aspects of the local concept of person. In this context, he explored the problem of conceptual and grammatical animacy, thereby contributing to a longstanding debate on the grammatical and semantic categories of the Ojibwe language (Anishinaabemowin) and other Algonquian languages. The article analyzes the most important contributions to this debate—oscillating between the arbitrariness of categorizations and their cultural determinants—and clarifies the main premises of Hallowell’s anthropology as well as his position on the linguistic problem of animacy.

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